The dramatic reduction in the cost and size of microcontrollers has led to their widespread adoption throughout the toy industry. In particular, many stuffed toys are now equipped with microcontrollers that provide an interactive experience for the owner. In many instances, the stuffed toy is further equipped with devices such as contact switches, e.g. momentary switches, or pressure sensors that can detect if and where a user is contacting the toy. Providing measurements from such devices to the microcontroller can allow the stuffed toy to more compellingly interact with the user. For example, a stuffed toy, e.g. a cat, can produce pre-recorded sounds, e.g. meowing, consistent with the user contact, e.g. stroking along the kitten's back.
Lullabies are a well-established technique for soothing children to sleep. Not all parents, however, are equally patient or musically inclined. Accordingly, toy manufacturers offer a wide variety of musical children's toys to aid parents in “singing their children to sleep”. Traditionally, such toys incorporate a windup music box movement that produces music for a limited period of time; long enough, the parents hope, to sooth the child to sleep. More recently, toy manufacturers have incorporated electronic music units, e.g. embedded microcontrollers driving piezoelectric tone generators or MP3 players. Typically, such units provide music of limited duration or music of gradually decreasing tempo or volume.
The musical mechanism is often incorporated within a toy, e.g. a plush stuffed animal, which may provide additional emotional comfort to the child. Older children with greater mental capacity, however, may find such passive toy designs insufficiently engaging. Such toys offer little enticement to a stubborn toddler that is simply not ready for sleep. Parents are thus faced with a dilemma. They desire a toy that is sufficiently engaging to lure a child to bed, yet not so stimulating as to actually inhibit sleep.
It would thus be advantageous to provide a simple and cost-effective mechanism for producing music with a stuffed toy, wherein the music is sufficiently engaging for a child. Such a mechanism would provide a substantial technical advance.
Furthermore, it would be advantageous to provide a structure, system and process for measuring the intensity of a pressure that is applied across one or more portions of the perimeter of an object, such as but not limited to a stuffed toy. Such a development would provide an additional technical advance.